With the development of message analysis technology, more and more data information can be acquired by analyzing message contents. For example, a client device such as a cellular telephone can acquire a message from an operator (e.g., a cellular service provider) that contains information regarding the user's data usage. To do so, the user will typically send a request to the operator, and receive a data usage message in return. The data usage message is parsed to determine one or more data usage values (e.g., “used data,” “remaining data,” etc.) that are contained in the message (e.g., as strings). Thus, the operator is able to provide a data usage query service to the user.
In conventional methods of providing a data usage query service, the data usage message is parsed by a server. The server acquires beforehand and stores templates corresponding to respective formats of data usage messages from various respective operators. The client device uploads the data usage messages to the server as they are received from the operator. The server parses the data usage messages (which include a data usage value) according the stored templates and returns the data usage value to the client device.
Problematically, these conventional methods require the client device to be connected to the server each time a data usage message is to be analyzed. Moreover, when an operator changes the respective format of their data usage messages, parsing errors are likely to occur.